NTT Docomo’s take on Google Glass: Intelligent glasses

September 18, 2013

Apparently, wearable devices are the future. If you’re not sick to death of the “Apple is going to announce a watch, we swear it’s real” announcements by now, then probably you have been living under a rock for the past 12 months. Today, it’s Japan’s own NTT Docomo’s turn to announce their progress in the field of wearable technology.

Is NTT banking on the success of Google Glass? Was it something they had envisioned long before Google? (I recall some ceatec event back in 2008 where they showcased facial recognition)… either way, NTT Docomo announced yesterday that they will have a booth at the Ceatec 2013 (a tech even in Kahin Makuhari, Japan <– hey, I used to work there ), and will introduce their new wearable prototype named “Intelligent glasses”.

The device will apparently ship with several cool features: facial recognition which pulls a full profile from the cloud (useful for salarymen who are tired to carry all their partners’ business cards with them, or binders full of women), and direct OCR+language translation (ok, this sounds insanely cool, but I’m worried they will focus on English-to-Japanese rather than Japanese-to-English).

Based on the pictures, the glasses are created by Vuzix, a US manufacturer specialized in computer display, especially… glasses

From Docomo:

Intelligent glasses give users a hands-free experience by utilizing a display on the frame to seamlessly provide information and entertainment. Visitors can experience direct manipulation of virtual content in a world of augmented reality (AR) created with the intelligent glasses and their innovative capabilities, such as facial recognition which pulls relevant information from the cloud to provide a profile of a person being viewed, and character recognition enabling instant language translation.

Additionally, Docomo will introduce its concept for the new 5G network, as well as new smartphone models for 2014.

Ceatec is scheduled to happen from October 1 to October 5.

Are you excited by wearable technology, and glasses in particular? I personally can’t wait for the eyePhone